


Finders Keepers

by Joking611



Series: Cari'ssi'mi Drabbles [29]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 22:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9261677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joking611/pseuds/Joking611
Summary: Shepard's been drinking. Liara goes to collect her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the Mass Effect Sunday Sprint Drabble on 8 Jan 2017
> 
> Starting Sentence: "Don't make this any harder than it has to be!"

“Do not make this any harder than it has to be.” Liara was tapping her foot impatiently.

“The boss says no.”

The Asari held up her arm, biotic tendrils dancing along its length. “Do you know who I am?”

The Turian leaned forward, mandibles flaring in an approximation of a grin. “I don’t care who you are lady. The boss says no. Back the fuck off unless you want your pretty head detached from your shoulders.”

Liara’s smile would have terrified a lesser man, or at least a smarter one. “I suppose your boss does not like you a great deal. This is your last chance.” She drew back her arm in preparation to “slap his ass with a singularity” as her father would say.

“Let her through.” Although the tension between the two didn’t dissipate, it dropped a notch at the voice. Aria had never looked up, her practiced apathy obvious in her tone. The maiden’s struggle had been amusing, but she wasn’t willing to lose one of her more loyal guards just to see what Shepard’s pet Asari had been willing to do.

Liara stepped around the Turian and down the pair of steps leading to the couch. The man followed a step behind.

“Not bad Baby Broker. How many places did you look before coming to me?”

None of course, but the last thing that Liara was going to do was admit to the Queen of Omega that she had her under constant surveillance.

“Missing something?” Aria prompted when Liara failed to respond.

“I am only here for Shepard,” Liara addressed Aria at last.

Aria looked down, acknowledging Shepard’s presence for the first time. The Human was laying across the couch with her head on Aria’s lap. Copper stands obscured the woman’s face. Shepard appeared to be sucking on some of them. “You have a very tired girl here. Perhaps we should let her sleep.”

“She can sleep on the Normandy, or back at the apartment.” Honestly, Liara had no idea how Shepard was able to sleep through the pounding beat that surrounded them in Purgatory.

“She can, but she chose here. I wonder why that is?” The question could have been rhetorical, but Liara knew it was directed at her.

“She has been drinking. You were her nearest friend. The closest place she felt safe.”

Aria’s eyes became slits. “I am not her friend, but she can be convenient. It’s almost worth tolerating the stench of booze and desperate maiden.” She paused. “That does not make her safe,” she stressed the last word as she laid a hand across Shepard’s shoulder possessively, “but she can remain with me for a time. It isn’t like she has all that much.”

Anger flashed in Liara’s eyes. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

Aria shrugged. “She’s Human. They’re in a constant state of decay.”

“She believes she is your friend.” Liara knew that Aria was trying to provoke her, but she found herself responding anyway.

Aria only grunted. “I don’t need friends.”

Maybe she even believed it. Liara didn’t care. “Then I will take her and go.” She stepped forward.

Instantly there was a sharp jab to her head, just behind her right aural. The Turian she’d passed pressing a Carnifex tightly against her skull.

“You need to stay right there.”

Aria smiled. Liara sighed.

Aria hadn’t even had time for a caustic remark before she was painted in dozens of target points. Felnus, and Sedimi, her Asari guard still at the top of the stairs were equally marked.

The Queen of Omega settled deeper into the couch, steepling her fingers.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Liara didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

If Aria was bothered by being in the sights of so many weapons, the matriarch didn’t show it. “Nothing happens in here unless I allow it. I was aware that you had agents in the club. ”

But not all of them, Liara knew. She’d had the sense to not have them all reveal themselves. The possibility of facing Aria had caused her to apply one of Shepard’s well worn maxims; “There’s no kill like overkill.”

Aria continued to ignore the standoff, returning her attention to Shepard. “So innocent, so trusting.” She looked up at Liara. “Does she even know the things you do for her? Have done in her name? It might change her perception of the lovesick maiden who follows her around.”

Liara’s reply was interrupted by motion in Aria’s lap. Shepard snorted, and lifted her head, blurry eyed.

“Pretty isn’t everything, is it?” Aria commented as Shepard wiped her mouth. The Human squinted as she worked to bring the room into focus. “She drooled on my pants.”

Shepard turned her head at Aria’s voice, sitting up slightly. Liara drew a sharp breath when the spectre’s head passed through several of the targeting lights. “See? I told you she’d come for me.” The Human slurred. Shepard turned her sleepy smile from Aria to Liara. “I love her.” There was an embarrassing amount of emotion in the comment. She curled her legs up tightly, making room at the end of the couch. “C’mere.”

Liara locked her gaze on Aria, who looked passively back. “Well?” She waved Felnus back to his post. “Don’t just stand there, she ‘loves’ you.“

Targeting lights went out one after the other. The very last having been between Aria’s eyes. After a moment Liara just sighed to herself. _‘Goddess.’_

She proceeded to seat herself at the end of Aria’s couch, as far from the other Asari as the length of the couch would allow.

Shepard immediately flipped over, burying her head into Liara’s lap while splaying her legs across Aria’s.

Aria made a disgusted sound as she pushed the Human’s legs off her. Her victory was short lived before Shepard put them back. Push, return. Push, return. Aria was ready to hit the annoying Human with a throw when Liara’s hand came up as well. The pair locked eyes for the second time in as many minutes when the impasse was interrupted by Shepard. The spectre grabbed Liara’s hand and brought it down to the back of her own head, forcing it into her hair.

Liara continued to glare at Aria, even intensifying it as she began stroking Shepard’s hair. Aria snorted as she turned away. “You two are pathetic.”

“And you let her drool on your pants. Do you do that with everyone you find ‘convenient’?”

“You’d hate to know what I do with people I find inconvenient.”

They sat in silence for a time, surrounded by the pounding music.

“She isn’t the ideal you think she is. She is violence. She is destruction.”

Liara nodded. “We have fought together. Many times.”

“She’s a killer.”

“She is a soldier, a vanguard.”

“She’s a murderer. She let me kill Petrovsky in cold blood.”

“I know.”

“Not the kind of thing you do for a ‘friend’ Baby Broker, that’s the kind of thing you talk friends out of. That is if virtue and mercy are truly what you stand for.”

Liara considered for a while. “He took Omega from you.”

“Yes,” through clenched teeth.

“That was not theft, that was not banishment, not for you.” Liara waited for a response. When none came, she continued. “You are Omega,” Liara parroted her words back to her. “What Petrovsky did was not a crime of property, it was rape. Shepard knew that, knew what you needed to heal.”

Eventually a response. “I should kill you for that.”

“You could try.”

They fell back into silence. The pair sat there for a while, long enough for the music to become repetitive. Liara continued to rub Shepard’s hair as the Human snored gently, face pressed into Liara’s abdomen. Aria thought they were ridiculous until she realized she didn’t know how long she’d been stroking the Human’s calf.

“You want a drink?”

“Please.”


End file.
